JanB1 wrote:There were even crazier DRMs. There was a game that had a disk with different numbers and characters and another, overlapping disk that had cutouts. During the installation, you had to turn the disk with the cutouts to a specific location and then you had to put in the numbers and characters you could see in a clockwise manner, starting from a specific point. That was one of the crazier DRMs I saw so far.

And about the "disk in drive", that's pretty easy. Copy all the stuff from the cd and make an image file from it. Mount it in a virtual drive and voila: ready to go. ^^

Or for Freelancer, grab the No-CD that is available at any site that still talks about freelancer.

JanB1 wrote:
Good thing I'm not from Germany. And I dunno if there's a copy protection. But I don't think so. Old games were DRM free (mostly).

Since I'm a bored human being, I did a quick research. Freelancer would ask you for the original CD in your disc drive, which was probably the first version of DRM for games.

WRONG! :V
The earliest DRM was even more fun!

The DRM for SimEarth for example, had you look up specific numbers and values from the manual.
While now they are all mapped out and available in a text document, at the time you would have to own a copy of the manual to be able to play. :3

And other versions of this book-codes, had them printed on a laminated piece of plastic that prevented photocopying! How old skool is that?

Actually the best DRM I have seen in the old C64 days was a game delivered with a floppy that had bad blocks (unreadable parts).
The game was checking at those address on startup and if not getting a hardware error, would stop working.

The workaround was a disk copy utility that actually somehow copied the bad blocks probably by repetitively passing the write head on the same portion. Yes, at that time it was possible to control the hardware that finely.

It was over my head, but I had to wait for the new utility to get my pirate absolutely legitimate copy of the game. Don't know what it was, though.

JanB1 wrote:But I make a copy of it and SELL it to you guys. With the handbook and the CD and the box-art and everything!

Selling the original copy, not illegal.
Giving away the original copy, not illegal.
Copying the original copy, illegal.
making a backup of the original, not illegal in some places (like nz iirc)
making a backup of the original, then giving away the original, but keeping the backup, illegal. (is copying then, because you gave away you rights to own that backup)

JanB1 wrote:But I make a copy of it and SELL it to you guys. With the handbook and the CD and the box-art and everything!

Selling the original copy, not illegal.
Giving away the original copy, not illegal.
Copying the original copy, illegal.
making a backup of the original, not illegal in some places (like nz iirc)
making a backup of the original, then giving away the original, but keeping the backup, illegal. (is copying then, because you gave away you rights to own that backup)